Surviving Nirvana

Death of the Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture

Sonya S. Lee

Publication Year: 2010

The Buddha’s nirvana marks the end of the life of a great spiritual figure and the beginning of Buddhism as a world religion. Surviving Nirvana is the first book in the English language to examine how this historic moment was represented and received in the visual culture of China. It is also a study about a pictorial image that has been in use for over 1,500 years. Mining a selection of well-documented and well-preserved examples from the sixth to twelfth centuries, Sonya Lee offers a reassessment of medieval Chinese Buddhism by focusing on practices of devotion and image-making that were inspired by the Buddha’s “complete extinction.” The nirvana image, comprised of a reclining Buddha and a mourning audience, was central to defining the local meanings of the nirvana moment in different times and places. The motif’s many guises, whether on a stone stele, inside a pagoda crypt, or as a painted mural in a cave temple, were the product of social interactions, religious institutions, and artistic practices prevalent in a given historical context. They were also cogent responses to the fundamental anxiety about the absence of the Buddha and the prospect of one’s salvation. By reinventing the nirvana image to address its own needs, each community of patrons, makers, and viewers sought to recast the Buddha’s “death” into an allegory of survival that was charged with local pride and contemporary relevance.

Conventions

In this book, the word “nirvana” and a few other Sanskrit terms commonly
used in the English language (e.g., Mahayana) are spelled without diacritical
marks for the sake of convenience. When the word’s historical meaning is in
discussion, however, it appears in its proper Romanized form (e.g., “nirvāna”).
All other Sanskrit terms are spelled with proper diacritical marks throughout. ...

Introduction

The word “survival” conjures ordeal, suffering, and endurance. In the twenty-first
century as in earlier times, it is common to make these associations
based on experience from everyday life. From news headlines around the world,
we read about nuclear weapons, terrorist attacks, global warming, flu pandemics,
earthquakes, or civil wars. Closer to home, we learn first-hand of a friend’s illness, ...

Chapter One - Doubles: Stone Implements

In the year 551, members of the Ning clan in Gaoliang gathered to celebrate
the completion of a Buddhist stele that they collectively commissioned. The
work was a large-size rectangular stone slab densely decorated with Buddhas,
bodhisattvas, and heavenly figures on all sides, along with numerous names and
images of their earthly donors. What the devotees had hoped to bring about ...

Chapter Two - Transformation: Pictorial Narratives

In November of 690, Empress Wu Zetian (624–705; r. 690–705) ordered the
establishment of a Dayun or Great Cloud Monastery in every prefecture of
the empire and in the two capitals.1 The imperial edict came just one month after
the empress ascended the throne of the Tang house and declared the founding of
the Zhou dynasty in its place, thus becoming the first and only female sovereign ...

Chapter Three - Family Matters: Nirvana Caves

Near the southernmost tip of Mogao Caves outside Dunhuang is a cave temple
that houses the largest reclining Buddha statue ever attempted at the site (map
3). Known by today’s numbering system as Cave 148, the structure was built
quite literally to contain an eighteen-meter-long sculpture in an elongated, boxlike
interior with barrel-vault ceiling (fig. 3.1). The overwhelming presence of the ...

Chapter Four - Impermanent Burials: Relic Deposits

Master Zhaoguo was a survivor of war. Like the many residents of Dingzhou
who lived in the decades following the fall of the Tang dynasty, the monk
was caught in the relentless fighting between the invading Khitans and the native
defenders from a succession of short-lived regimes better known in history
books as the Five Dynasties (907–960).1 After a particularly fierce battle in 947, ...

Epilogue

On July 1, 2006, the Dafo or Great Buddha Monastery of Zhangye in
Gansu province celebrated its newly reinstated status as a place of religious
activity with much fanfare. In the largest gathering ever in over a century, dozens
of Buddhist masters led public rituals to extend blessings to the multitudes who
swamped the temple ground.1 For three consecutive days, local residents had the ...

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